REPEAT/ADE Announces Initial Sale of Its WaferSight Wafer Geometry Tool for 90nm and Below.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

SEMICON Europa 2003

REPEATING...Please note company name should be all caps

WESTWOOD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2003

ADE Wafer Flatness Tool Supports Semiconductor Industry Roadmap to 35nm Generation

ADE Corporation (Nasdaq: ADEX), a leading supplier of production metrology and inspection systems for the semiconductor wafer, semiconductor device, magnetic storage and optics manufacturing industries, today announced the first sale of its advanced optical flatness metrology tool, WaferSight(TM), to a leading-edge silicon wafer manufacturer. The tool, based on ADE's proprietary interferometry technology, was purchased after an extensive beta evaluation period and will now be brought on-line in the wafer manufacturer's most advanced 300mm factory. This is the first optical interferometric flatness system bought for full-scale 300mm wafer production. The current 300mm wafer production standard tool is ADE's AFS-Advance Flatness System(TM) incorporating precision electrical capacitance sensors.

"We are encouraged by this key customer's early adoption of WaferSight, our latest generation flatness metrology product," said Dr. Chris L. Koliopoulos, president and CEO of ADE Corporation. "After completing an exceptionally positive beta evaluation of WaferSight, this customer purchased ADE's tool as a key component of its 300mm capital investment strategy. The first sale in the industry of this technology is a milestone achievement for ADE. The solution to enable industry roadmap capability to the 35 nanometer generation required the adoption of advanced optical technology. This adoption is further evidence that ADE remains the technology leader in production wafer geometry metrology."

WaferSight provides high throughput wafer mapping of shape, flatness and thickness variations. Premium-quality, high-grade optics along with precision engineering enable both surfaces of a 300mm wafer to be mapped during a single acquisition ensuring extremely precise measurements at high throughput. Built for in-line metrology during wafer production, WaferSight measurements are an ideal complement to NanoMapper(TM), ADE's interferometric nanotopography tool. NanoMapper is already widely adopted as the tool of choice for nanotopography metrology by both silicon wafer and leading-edge device manufacturers. Both tools feature significantly higher throughput and precision than any other systems on the market, reducing the number of overall tools required to provide 100% sampling of these critical measurements, as well as lowering the cost-of-ownership for wafer manufacturers.

WaferSight models for both 300mm and advanced 200mm wafers are available using non-contaminating edge-grip automated wafer handling. Both models meet industry roadmap requirements for wafer flatness metrology down to 35nm design rules. With such extensibility, wafer manufacturers will be able to leverage their capital investments of WaferSight across multiple generations of end-customer requirements.

To learn more about WaferSight and other ADE products, visit the Company's booth at Semicon Europa, April 1 - 3, 2003, Hall B1, Booth # 123.

About ADE Corporation

ADE Corporation is a leading supplier of metrology and inspection systems for the silicon wafer, magnetic data storage and optics manufacturing industries. The Company's systems analyze and report product quality at critical manufacturing process steps for yield enhancement, providing quality certification data that is relied upon by semiconductor wafer, device and computer disk manufacturers. The Company's systems also are used for production measurements in the semiconductor chip fabrication process. To learn more about ADE, visit the Company's Web site at http://www.ade.com.

Safe Harbor 

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Those statements that make reference to the Company's expectations, predictions, assumptions and anticipations should be considered forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, those associated with the demand for and the effect of WaferSight(TM) on manufacturers production processes. These statements involve risks and uncertainties including those associated with the strength of the semiconductor industry; wafer pricing and wafer demand; the success of ADE's product offerings to meet customer needs within the timeframes required by customers; and the launch of competitive product offerings. Further information on potential factors that could affect ADE Corporation's business is described in the Company's reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2002.